Gil Reel, 1920-2003: The caretaker of the Kalakala

'He was the unsung hero' of ferry's rescue, says Bevis

When the Kalakala, once the pride of the Puget Sound ferry fleet, sat rusting, abandoned and forgotten in the Alaska mud, it sorely need a guardian angel.

Then Gil Reel appeared. Reel, who rode the boat when it was a ferry and worked on its decks when it became a floating cannery, fought to keep it from being sent to a wrecking yard. He even lived on it.

And when Seattle rediscovered the old ferry and brought it south to make it shine again, Reed, ill and elderly, moved from Alaska to the Seattle area, too, to be close to family.

He died Friday night in a Lynnwood care home where he had lived since early last year.

"I'm sad and I miss him, but he went peacefully," said Peter Bevis, the Seattle sculptor whose dream it was to rescue, return and renovate the Kalakala. Reel became a close friend and inspiration as Bevis and his group worked to retrieve the boat. "Without Gil, the Kalakala would have been gone in the early '80s."

When Bevis first came aboard the ferry in Alaska in 1988, Reel handed him a flashlight and "turned me loose" to tour it, Bevis recalls.

Reel, it seems, had become the old vessel's unofficial and unpaid caretaker -- cleaning and maintaining it as he could, keeping the vandals away.

"He's really the unsung hero for 30 years, because he was up there, out of public view, on the boat, hoping someone would save it," said Art Skolnik, once director of the Seattle foundation that tried to restore the ferry. "It worked. The Kalakala's history is not over, as we've seen. It's a stubborn old boat, and he's one of those that's stubborn, as well."

Reel was born Sept. 4, 1920, in Deer Park, Wash. His family situation forced him to begin working while still a teenager. But daughter Cynthia Slaybaugh said he schooled himself in mathematics and developed a love of history at an early age.

He held a variety of jobs, eventually moving to the Puget Sound area in the 1950s and starting an iron-working business in Bellevue. Reel rode the Kalakala in those days, including its last run in 1967, he later told friends.

He moved into construction work, becoming a superintendent on projects that took him to Montana, then to Alaska, where he took up refrigeration-maintenance work.

That work took him to Kodiak, where Reel spotted the Kalakala lying in mud, reworked as a fish-processing plant. He kept the ferry's refrigeration units humming.

When the last cannery to own the old ferry went bankrupt, Reel stayed on or near the boat.

"When the (cannery) company went bankrupt ... he spent some time living on the boat, and he had a trailer in the back in that area and (kept a) shop on the boat," said Steve Russell, a University of Washington researcher who interviewed Reel for Russell's 2002 book, "Kalakala, Magnificent Vision Recaptured."

Reel continued working as Kodiak's only refrigeration man until late 2001. With memories of riding the ferry in its heyday, he developed an affinity for the old ferry early on. He researched the boat, finding old pictures, and hoped, as Bevis eventually did, that it could some day be restored.

"He was just fascinated by it," Slaybaugh said of the vessel. "It was a one-of-a-kind thing. He hated to see anything that had made it that far just fade into oblivion."

Once Bevis became fascinated, as well, Reel encouraged him and his group of volunteers who came up to dig the old boat out of the Kodiak mud. Reel had for years discouraged Kodiak officials from scrapping or scuttling the old boat, long enough for Bevis and his group to show up and free it from the muck.

As Bevis negotiated with the city of Kodiak to buy the boat, he said, officials told him Reel is "guarding the boat but he's not our employee. Gil comes with the boat, Mr. Bevis."

It was not a problem. Reel loaned Bevis and his workers paint and tools. He and Bevis became pals, huddling around Reel's wood stove as Reel recounted stories about his days as a World War II bomber flight engineer. (He was shot down over Germany but made his way back to his base in Italy, on foot, relatives said).

The two men shared their dream for the Kalakala. Eventually Bevis' group got the boat off the Kodiak waterfront and returned it to Seattle in late 1998.

Reel stayed in Kodiak until early 2002, when he suffered strokes. His family moved him to the group home in Lynnwood, not far from Slaybaugh's home. When Reel died, the Kalakala had been back in Seattle for five years, but restoration had foundered. A bankruptcy court sold the old ship this fall to a Tumwater developer who hopes, as Bevis and Reel did, to restore it into a waterfront attraction.

At Reel's request, a funeral won't be held. His remains have been cremated.

Besides Slaybaugh, Reel's survivors include another daughter, Tracy Hidalgo in San Diego. Reel's wife, Dorothy, died several years ago, as did daughter Nicky Bale, who had moved to San Jose.

The dream of the Kalakala survives him as well.

In June 2002, Reel was invited to a news conference put on by the now-defunct Kalakala Foundation as part of its ill-fated restoration effort. Unsteady after his strokes, he was helped onto the rusting vessel by a nurse but climbed to the wheelhouse to renew his memories.

Afterward the normally quiet Reel raved about the visit. "He said he had a great time -- the highest compliment (from him) you could ever have," Slaybaugh said.